Dissatisfied Latvians turn to pro-Russia Harmony party
RIGA: The pro-Kremlin Harmony party won Latvia’s general election ahead of populists, final results showed yesterday, but talks on forming a governing coalition looked thorny due to the country’s fragmented political scene.
Harmony topped Saturday’s vote with 19.91% of the vote ahead of two populist parties — KPV LV with 14.06% and the New Conservative Party with 13.6%.
“No coalition combination is possible without Harmony that would appear able and stable,” Harmony’s chairman and Riga mayor Nils Ushakovs told the LETA agency in a statement.
Harmony, popular with Latvia’s ethnic Russian minority which makes up about a quarter of the country’s 1.9 million population, was formerly allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party and has won the largest number of votes in the last three elections.
It never entered government as it failed to attract coalition partners, but the populists suggested before the vote that they may help propel it to power this time.
“KPV LV can work with anybody, we don’t have any red lines regarding any other political force,” lawyer Aldis Gobzems, KPV LV’s candidate for prime minister, said in a recent TV debate.
Latvia’s public broadcaster said on its website the results would give Harmony 24 seats out of 100 in the parliament, which is called Saeima.
But together with an expected 15 seats for KPV LV, the two parties would need at least one other partner to clinch a majority.
The pro-EU, pro-Nato liberal For Development/For! party came fourth in the vote with 12.04%, beating parties from the current centre-right governing coalition including the rightwing National Alliance, which earned 11.03%.
The centre-right Greens and Farmers Union of Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis won 9.96% and the New Unity took 6.67% as the last party crossing the five percent threshold to have seats in parliament.
The ruling three-party government coalition fared poorly despite having righted the country’s economy, which was hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis.
Still, its leaders and analysts believed it would have a say in the next government coalition.
“I am sure that initiative in the coalition talks must come from the centre-right parties,” Augusts Brigmanis, the chairman of the Greens and Farmers Union, told LETA.
Political scientist Filips Rajevskis said the new parliament is “very fragmented”.
“I think we will see the new cabinet of ministers no sooner than mid-November,” he said.
He added that a coalition of the three
ruling parties and newcomers was a likely scenario, with Harmony ultimately snubbed again, and predicted “ugly” talks to form the new cabinet.
“The more experienced parties will teach some lessons to the newcomers,” he said.
The vote was tarnished by a hacker attack on the Draugiem.lv social network, second in popularity only to Facebook in Latvia, which displayed a pro-Russian message.
“Comrades Latvians, this concerns you. The borders of Russia have no end,” it said in Russian, followed by images of Russian soldiers, tanks parading in Moscow and Vladimir Putin.